What makes a good multilingual transcription app?
A good multilingual transcription app recognizes speech accurately across several languages, summarizes in the same language you spoke, and does it without uploading your audio. Inscribe covers 15 languages, runs 100% on-device, and works offline, so a Spanish interview or a German lecture never leaves your device to get transcribed.
Plenty of apps advertise language support but route everything through a cloud service to do it. If you record client conversations, medical notes, or research interviews, that upload is the part you want to avoid. On-device processing removes it entirely.
Which languages are supported?
Inscribe transcribes and summarizes in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, and Turkish. The summary comes back in the same language as the recording, so a French meeting gives you a French transcript and a French summary.
One thing to be clear about: there is no translation feature. The app will not turn a Japanese recording into English text. It transcribes and summarizes within each language. If that is what you need, you are covered; if you specifically want translation, this is not the tool for it.
Why on-device matters for multilingual work
People who work across languages often handle sensitive material: cross-border interviews, immigration paperwork read aloud, family conversations, business calls. Sending that audio to a server in another country raises real questions about who can access it. When recording, transcription, summaries, and Q&A all run locally, there is no cloud AI or transcription provider in the loop, so those questions go away.
Offline also means it keeps working where connectivity is unreliable, on a train, in a clinic, or traveling. Once your model is downloaded, no signal is required.
Choosing a model for your language
| Model | Size | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Apple Speech | Built in | Fast, everyday recordings |
| Whisper Tiny | ~40MB | Quick notes, light storage |
| Whisper Base | ~140MB | Good accuracy, mixed audio |
| Whisper Small | ~460MB | Accents and noisier recordings |
For clearer accuracy in a non-English language or with a strong accent, Whisper Base or Small usually does better than the lightweight options. Auto will pick the best available model if you would rather not choose.
Summaries and Q&A in the same language
After transcribing, generate a summary in the style that fits: concise, bullets, structured, or action items. It stays in the recording's language. You can then open Ask Inscribe and ask questions about the transcript in that language and get answers back with citations to the relevant part, all processed on-device.
File related recordings into a project and you can ask questions across the whole set. For someone tracking interviews in several languages, that becomes a private, searchable archive rather than a pile of audio files.
What about voice commands?
While recording, you can use spoken commands to mark action items, decisions, and key points. That specific feature is English-only for now. Transcription and summaries themselves work across all 15 languages.
Where it runs
Inscribe works on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. You can record live, import an audio or video file, or on Mac capture system audio from any app. No account is required and files stay on your device, with optional iCloud sync off by default.
Related reading
Frequently Asked Questions
How many languages does the app transcribe?
Inscribe transcribes and summarizes in 15 languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, and Turkish. The summary comes back in the same language as your recording.
Does it translate between languages?
No. There is no translation feature. The app transcribes and summarizes within each language, so a German recording gives you German text and a German summary, not an English one.
Is multilingual transcription private?
Yes. Recording, transcription, summaries, and Q&A run 100% on-device with no cloud AI or transcription provider. Your audio stays on your device, which matters for sensitive cross-language work.
Which model is best for non-English audio?
Whisper Base or Small usually gives better accuracy for non-English speech and strong accents than the lightweight options. Set the model to Auto and Inscribe picks the best one available.
Get Inscribe
Private, on-device transcription with AI summaries and cross-library Q&A. Works on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
Get Inscribe on the App Store